BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The Indiana basketball story ends on a crisp December day in 2011, a day that seems destined to be dominated and defined by an ugly brawl that spills over the boundaries of a college court in Cincinnati and into the national consciousness with a velocity only modern technology could facilitate.

As it happens, though, to those who define the center of the basketball universe as Bloomington, Ind., that episode exists primarily to provide a dramatic contrast to what develops in Assembly Hall, where so much of the sport’s recent history has been written. Hours after Cincinnati and Xavier end their game with blood and fury a couple of hours down the road, a moment of invention from Indiana coach Tom Crean and a flash of brilliance from junior forward Christian Watford create an almost nuclear chain reaction that results in Watford’s left-wing 3-pointer to defeat the No. 1 team in the land, longtime IU rival Kentucky.

This becomes the ideal denouement for an epic that had begun nearly four years earlier, when Crean was hired away from Marquette to rescue the Hoosiers from a conflagration ignited by an NCAA investigation into illicit recruiting calls and ultimately resulting in a season — Crean’s first at IU — with no veteran scholarship players.

Crean had left Marquette because he would be taking over a program with five NCAA championships to its credit, with names such as Buckner, Benson, Alford, Cheaney and Isiah — because he needs only a first name — in its history.

With the IU roster in shambles, though, with Crean and his staff essentially starting with an empty gym, there had been so much frustration, so many defeats, so many lessons in the interim.

But now they are here, in this moment, the fans charging on the floor, Crean reaching into the stands to embrace the family members who had suffered through three seasons along with him, his assistants and his players.

“Last time I saw Bloomington that crazy was in 2002, when they made the championship game,” says junior guard Jordan Hulls, who went to high school a few miles from campus. “It showed that Indiana was back.”

Did you really believe it all could end there? If this were a movie, or one of those based-on-a-true-story docudramas, or even an episode of the reality TV Crean claims to love, a shot of that post-Kentucky celebration could have been frozen in time. This is real life, though. It is not the kind of real life in which the principals put themselves at peril working on deepwater oil rigs or fighting fires. This is college basketball. But there are risks.

For instance, there was the real possibility the Hoosiers might have presumed they’d made it, that the Watford shot conveyed all the success necessary to erase the anguish of the previous three years. Or worse, that they could coast from that point on and still be relevant when March began. The Hoosiers woke up the day after the Kentucky game with 22 games still on their schedule, plus the Big Ten Tournament. Now they will try to make the 2012 NCAA Tournament last as long as possible, the lucky ones among them will get to go through it all again next year.

“There’s no arrival point here,” Crean says. “The ‘We’re Back’ T-shirts are hot sellers, but we’re not wearing them to practice. That’s not how you think. If you think like that, you set yourself up for failure.”

DeCOURCY FROM FIRST FOUR

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With 9:53 still to play against Wisconsin one evening in February 2010, Crean found himself alone in the IU locker room at Assembly Hall. He fumed. He was furious at the referees who had ejected him, sure, but quite obviously at his circumstance, as well. The Hoosiers had lost 29 of the 33 Big Ten games he had coached. This would be 30. He knew there’d be more to come.

Back when Crean was hired, he had explained his decision to leave a comfortable situation at Marquette, where he quite obviously was the most powerful person in the athletics department, with two simple words, “It’s Indiana.” It was beginning to seem he’d used the wrong tense in that declaration.

Would this ever be Indiana again, really?

Jack Harbaugh left his seat in the Assembly Hall stands and walked to the locker room. A longtime college football coach who won the 2002 NCAA Division I-AA title with Western Kentucky, he also is Crean’s father-in-law. John Harbaugh, Jack’s son and the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, went along.

Crean says that was the moment that turned everything in the proper direction. It helped that IU recruited 6-11 center Cody Zeller and that the Hoosiers built Cook Hall, the spectacular practice facility, and it helped that the program’s passionate fan base rarely wavered in support of the reconstruction. But the guy in charge needed an adjustment.

“I was so angry with so many things in that game,” says Crean. “I don’t regret sticking up for the team but was so angry. John really helped me re-channel where this needed to go. It was a chance to be at its lowest point, and from there we went straight ahead, full-throttle, focused, ‘This is how we’re doing it.’ And we really never wavered.

“John and Jack being in there was a huge turning point: It’s OK to care about your team. Now, channel your anger the right way, turn it into resolve.”

Including the Big Ten Tournament, Indiana was 8-49 against conference opponents in Crean’s first three years. The Hoosiers won a single league road game in 27 tries. They left the conference tourney after a single day each time.

Just last year, they finished 3-15 in the conference regular season.

“My high school team was undefeated my senior year,” Hulls says. “I’d never really lost that much in my life, and getting in the situation we were in, going through the everyday process, we worked really hard. It was really difficult, but I knew there was a reason. It just took some time.”

When Crean arrived at Indiana, interim coach Dan Dakich — well-remembered as a starter for the Hoosiers in the mid-1980s — already had removed two players from the team for disciplinary reasons.

“If I had one more day, I was getting rid of two more,” Dakich says.

Those players, whoever they were, ultimately were among the stampede out the Assembly Hall exit. Some left of their own volition. Two were dismissed by Crean. A couple turned professional.

In order to field a team for the 2008-09 season, Crean had to round up whomever he could. There were some unsigned prep prospects (Malik Story and Verdell Jones III). Forward Tom Pritchard and guard Matt Roth had signed early with previous coach Kelvin Sampson. Guard Nick Williams had pledged to Crean at Marquette and decided to follow him to IU. Former walk-on Kyle Taber was the closest the team had to a veteran presence.

Jones, Roth and Pritchard remain, although Jones will miss the NCAA Tournament because of a torn ACL sustained March 8. Their experience has not been easy.

“When we came in, we really didn’t have an upper class to show us the way,” Pritchard says. “There were a couple guys left over that helped us, but pretty much we were playing to play. Unfortunately, our record didn’t show it but we were working really hard to improve. We just thought about the next game. We always knew Indiana would come back.”

FROM SI.COM

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It is simple enough to say Zeller changed everything. And true. The Hoosiers finished 12-20 last season. This year, they won their 12th game before Christmas. It is not merely his 15.5 points per game and the defensive presence he adds along the baseline. It’s this: At 6-11, 230 pounds, with a McDonald’s All American pedigree and skill that is rare even among such prospects, he provides a sturdiness to the frontcourt that allows everyone else to do what they do best, and do it better.

There is less pressure on Watford to perform inside. He is most dangerous as a face-up shooter and now gets to play that way without feeling guilty that the inside work isn’t getting done. He’d made as many 3-pointers by mid-February as he had all of last season.

Sophomore wings Victor Oladipo and Will Sheehey have improved dramatically since last season, but that’s at least partly about the need for opponents to gather their defenses inside to bother Zeller. Hulls is collecting more assists, as was Jones before his injury.

“I said I thought they’d win 23-25 games this year. And I got killed: ‘You’re a homer!’ ” says Dakich, now an Indianapolis sports talk host and ESPN game analyst. “First off, their non-conference schedule was easy. And the other thing, everybody points to Cody, and you can. You should. He’s been a huge difference-maker. But I’m telling you what a difference Oladipo and Sheehey and Jordan Hulls have made.

“I really believe those three kids made others come to their level. Watford had to make a choice — Am I firmly with the program, or am I going to be by myself? Being by yourself was OK for the first two years, but not this summer. You had to make a choice.

“They’ve got gym rats. Nobody has gym rats anymore. They had guys in Cook Hall at 2 in the morning. A lot of coaches say that’s going on, but it’s sometimes crap.”

Zeller’s commitment to Indiana was a bold step in the current climate. We don’t see many players willing to serve as pioneers, to be the player to help turn around a program — even one with IU’s history.

“Just going to practices, knowing coach Crean, I had a good feeling about where the program was headed. They hadn’t won a whole lot, but I had faith it would change,” Zeller says. “When I got here in the summer, I knew everybody was playing hard, playing well, but I didn’t have anything else to compare it to as far as how hard people worked.

"I didn’t know how far we’d go or how good we’d be. I knew we’d definitely be competitive. Nobody knows how far we can go yet.”

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It was nearly two months into the season before Indiana absorbed its first loss. It became a more frequent occurrence afterward.

Although this season has been transformational for IU basketball, it has not been miraculous. The advance from bad to good is difficult; progressing from good to great is an enormous challenge.

“I don’t know who said it, but someone said within the next three or four years he’ll have that team in the Final Four,” Kentucky coach John Calipari says.

Although rivals now, the two are close friends. Crean helped Calipari prep for the 2008 NCAA title game, watching film deep into the San Antonio night along with Calipari’s Memphis staff. Calipari sent along some zone-offense tips only last month.

“I know who he has. I know who he’s bringing in,” Calipari says. “I know how hard he’s working and how good a coach he is. He’s already proven as a coach he can build, just like at Marquette. And he’ll prove it there.”

There are so many aspects of the game in which IU must improve — some that can be handled in the confines of this season, some that will demand the promised talent influx arriving over the next few years. Crean and his staff have signed five players for next fall, three of whom rank among the top six prospects at their positions, according to Scout.com. Guard Yogi Ferrell, wing Jeremy Hollowell and forward Hanner Perea will bring a level of athleticism currently missing from the Hoosiers’ defense.

The players already on board must understand how to win — in tough circumstances when they’re on the Big Ten road, where they lost six of nine games, and in comfortable circumstances, when they’re holding a lead at home.

“They’ve got to learn to put the hammer down,” Crean says. “The Kentucky game was the greatest example. We had them down 10 and completely lost focus.

“Now, it’s real easy to say Kentucky’s really good, they were going to come back — but we let them come back. And that’s not arrogant. That’s the truth. We didn’t play as well on offense. We weren’t as good out of timeouts. We didn’t run plays all the way through. That’s maturity and focus.”

These are good problems to have, or at least better problems. Crean admits there were times during all the losing when it affected him physically, when he lost weight, lost sleep, had “a few health scares” and ultimately wound up alone in the IU locker room with lots of the Wisconsin game still to play.

He says it has helped to run regularly with assistant A.D. Jayd Grossman and also to listen to church services on the satellite radio in his car. Mostly, though, it has helped to coach a winning program.